David Fairén-Jiménez receives 2018 SRUK Emerging Talent Award

Dr David Fairén-Jiménez has been awarded the SRUK 2018 Emerging Talent Award by the Society of Spanish Researchers in the United Kingdom (SRUK/CERU) and Fundación Banco Santander. The award recognizes his excellent academic career in the chemistry of advanced materials, a career that ranges from the design of new materials to its development and commercialization with therapeutic and industrial use.

The committee evaluated 12 nominations of the highest level. Prof Laura Lechuga (chair of the committee) believes that this award "not only means a great recognition of the excellent research carried out by this young and promising researcher, but also serve to promote other important aspects of the scientific career as the technological transfer, and at the same it will contribute to balance parental and professional responsibilities.”

Dr Fairén-Jiménez currently directs the Adsorption and Advanced Materials Laboratory here. He is also founder and director of Immaterial Labs Ltd and Tarsis Technologies Ltd. In 2016, he received a Consolidator Grant from the European Research Council.

His group is an international reference for the design and development of new materials. His work combines the use of supercomputers to predict, simultaneously, the performance of thousands of materials in each application with the synthesis of the best candidates in the laboratory. This approach reduces the time required to develop new materials from years to days as it allows to identify and design materials in an efficient way. These materials allow the storage of gases such as hydrogen or natural gas, or they can capture gases to reduce the greenhouse effect. In addition, these same materials can be used to control drugs release in diseases such as cancer.

Dr Fairén-Jiménez said, "Receiving the 2018 SRUK Emerging Talent Award is an extraordinary boost to professional recognition in my career that will facilitate the development of my scientific contribution. Although international mobility has helped me to build an excellent curriculum, this has only been possible at the expense of my partner's professional career. Part of this award will allow us to work on improving this situation. In addition, it will also contribute to support my first company, Immaterial Labs, based in the commercial development of ideas generated in our laboratories in Cambridge".